


a mouth in a dark room

by pancakefucker



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: A brief mention of Julia, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 16:43:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14140206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pancakefucker/pseuds/pancakefucker
Summary: Before Kravitz, post-Refuge. Taako and Magnus find each other, alone, just for a little bit.(A really, really short relationship study.)





	a mouth in a dark room

It’s in Refuge, when things change. 

It’s a slight shift. Hardly noticeable, but Magnus notices. It’s always been his job to notice. Comes with being a carpenter. 

After the third time he dies, he notices. In the heat of battle, he notices. The glance Taako gives him, every single time, right before the world flashes a blinding white and they end up right where they start. There’s something indecipherable in that gaze—Taako’s emotions are written right across his face, but Magnus doesn’t know the language they’re written in.

He doesn’t mention it. It’s not that big of a deal. Who’s to say Magnus doesn’t look back, his gaze just as intense, his eyes just as wide, his confusing feelings laid bare for all to see? 

It’s just—Taako doesn’t do this. He doesn’t get to do this. He doesn’t get to lower his defenses for a split-second and come back, being his strange and aloof and funny old self. Magnus remembers, distantly; sitting around a campfire, talking and talking and talking and asking, Taako, how do you feel about this collecting artifacts bullshit, and he’d shrugged, evaded answering with one wave. _I don’t do feelings_.

Magnus knows a wound when he hears one.

It’s right around the sixth time they die that Magnus finally recognizes what it is, on Taako’s face, in that heartbeat of a moment before oblivion. 

The fight goes out of Taako’s shoulders, his breath rattles out of his chest. It all clicks. It’s relief.

And Magnus realizes, for what might be the sixth or seventh time he’s suspended in darkness, that he’s been feeling it, too. Relief. His body believing, for a second, that it’s over. That he’s going back to Julia. 

And he is pulled back to the earth, back to Refuge, back to Merle and Taako. Magnus doesn’t mention it. Taako doesn’t do feelings. 

  
  


***

  
  


If there was a small stirring in Taako and Magnus’s relationship—Magnus is hesitant to call it friendship—in Refuge,  _ after _ Refuge is when it is shaken. 

They’re in a tavern swathed in candlelight, each of them sulking about in their own corners. Magnus sits with his back to the tavern wall, watching both Merle and Taako in intervals. Merle looks like he’s going to pass out on the table. Taako runs his fingers on the rim of the mug of ale he’s drinking. Magnus peers down his own drink, frowning. He hadn’t meant to drink that much.

Before he knows it, Taako comes by his side, firmly planting himself on the seat next to Magnus. Magnus blinks. There is a certain process involved when looking at Taako. The first step is to get used to his presence, before looking at him. The second step is to look at some part of his body, preferably not the face. The third step is to home in on one singular feature, like the curve of Taako’s mouth, or the long lashes, or his nose. 

“Hey,” Taako says.

Magnus is at a step one.

Slowly, Taako touches Magnus’s wrist. The skin there starts to burn, and it isn’t because of magic. 

“You’re not lookin’ too good,” Taako says. “Wanna call it a night?”

Magnus hears the invitation. He still aches with Julia’s voice echoing through his bones, with her hands still finding themselves in his, and he aches, most of all, with her absence, burning away in his chest. 

And Taako must be aching, too, with something Magnus won’t ever know. Maybe this is why Taako came to him, in the first place.

And maybe, this is why Magnus says, “I think I will.”

Maybe this is why Magnus holds Taako’s gaze. 

Maybe this is why, when they’re up in the room, Magnus takes Taako’s hand and kisses the heel of his palm, just like Julia would have liked.

Just like Taako likes.

It’s a little too easy after that. Their bodies two very different instruments, but beating to the same, slow, tender rhythm. It’s familiar, in a purely primal and instinctual level. But it is also reassuring. And the both of them--two terribly broken people, Magnus thinks--need reassuring. Wherever they can find it. In a dark seedy tavern room, lit only by the orange glow of two candles. In a bed that smells like other people. In each other. 

  
  


*******

  
  


When Magnus wakes up, Taako isn’t there.

It doesn’t hurt. Magnus glances at the mussed up sheets, his discarded clothes. It doesn’t hurt. 

Taako doesn’t even look at him the whole time they’re in the bubble, heading back to the Bureau of Balance.

It doesn’t hurt.

_You’re a shitty liar, Burnsides_ , Julia says, somewhere in the past. 

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
